One Democrat's gamble on climate change

This story is part of an ongoing POLITICO series on how national policy issues are affecting the 2014 midterm elections.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — This Rust Belt state is one of the last places you might expect to wage a winning Senate campaign by trumpeting climate change to liberals at Netroots Nation and boasting about voting for cap and trade.

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But Michigan Democrat Gary Peters is making the climate cause a central message in his neck-and-neck Senate campaign, in a state that for decades built gas-guzzling cars into a foundation of the U.S. economy.

Peters’ aggressiveness on the issue stands out in a campaign year when other embattled Democrats are attacking President Barack Obama’s climate policies, ducking positions on controversies like the Keystone XL oil pipeline and running away from past votes that could bite them at the ballot box. But the House member is gambling that he can appeal to voters — including conservative-leaning residents in northern Michigan — with a climate message honed to home-state priorities like the health of the Great Lakes.

The question: Is Peters offering a vision that can help other Democrats win tough races in manufacturing-heavy states? Or a cautionary tale?

Peters is clinging to narrow leads over Republican Terri Lynn Land in recent polls as they vie to succeed retiring Sen. Carl Levin, and it’s unclear whether he can sell climate policy to voters who may increasingly care about the issue but rank it a low priority compared with jobs and the economy. The race is split in other ways as well: Peters is getting big support from national environmental groups and climate activist billionaire Tom Steyer, while Land’s backers include a group backed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Still, supporters like Michigan Democratic strategist Jill Alper think Peters is smart to play up climate change — and she says other Democrats should do the same.

“I think in a lot of states, this would be good politics and a good leadership issue,” she said. In Michigan, she added, protecting the Great Lakes is a cause that both Republicans and Democrats support.

Land’s campaign is trying to spread the message that Peters is too radical for Michigan, although her campaign declined repeated requests to make her available for an interview to discuss her own position on climate change.

“Congressman Peters is willing to sell his position to the highest bidder, and right now that’s the billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer,” Land said in a written response to questions. “When Michigan unemployment was at 15 percent, Congressman Peters ‘proudly voted’ for cap-and-trade, even though it would cost around 100,000 Michigan jobs,” she added, citing estimates by groups like The Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Manufacturers.

As for her own views, Land wrote that there “is no denying that the climate is changing and we must take measures to protect the environment.” When asked how much of that change is caused by humans, Land spokeswoman Heather Swift said in an email that “Terri believes we need to keep an eye on it; but she doesn’t believe we should put a meter on the business end of a cow, like the EPA does.”

Land’s campaign told The Washington Post in May that she doesn’t agree with Peters “on the extent of the effect of human behavior on our climate.”

Peters has sought to turn the issue against Land, demanding repeatedly that she declare where she stands on the reality of climate science. He said her position is “clearly out of step with the overwhelming scientific evidence.”

“Her stances are about ideology,” he said in an interview. “They’re not about practical problem-solving.”

Peters has also taken up the cause at Netroots Nation, the annual liberal gathering held this year in Detroit, where he proclaimed that “climate change is real” and introduced progressive icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). And he says on his House website that he “proudly” stands by his vote in 2009 for the cap-and-trade bill, a measure that soon sank to oblivion in the Senate and proved a political liability for several Democrats in 2010’s midterm elections.

One possible factor in Peters’ favor is that the politics of climate regulations have changed in Michigan in the past several years. The auto industry once resisted calls for reducing its carbon pollution through increased fuel efficiency standards, but the Obama administration got automakers to agree during his first term to a sharp tightening of those requirements.

On the other hand, not even all of Peters’ supporters buy his message that climate change is harming the Great Lakes. “Global warming occurred hundreds and thousands of years ago” as well, said John Pampu, CEO of Big Jon Sports, which owns a downrigger fishing production plant in Interlochen where Peters and Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow talked to employees last week about the threat posed by invasive Asian carp.

Still, Pampu said he and many of his employees would support Peters, even though many lean conservative. He said voters there care about protecting the Great Lakes because they’re such an economic engine for the state. “We do want to protect it and we’ll fight tooth and nail,” he said.